Page 136 - Our Vanishing Wild Life

CHAPTER XIII
EXTERMINATION OF BIRDS FOR WOMEN'S HATS*
It is high time for the whole civiHzed world to know that many of the most beautiful and remarkable birds of the world are now being exterminated to furnish millinery ornaments for women's wear. The mass of new information that we have recently secured on this trafiic from the headquarters of the feather trade is appalling. Previously, I had not dreamed that conditions are half as bad as they are.
It is entirely fitting that on this subject New York should send a messagetoLondon. NewYorkisalmostaSpotlessTowninplume-free millinery, and London and Paris are the worst places in the world. We havecleanedhouse. Withbutextremelyslightexceptions,thebloodof the slaughtered innocents is no lor.^er upon our skirts, and on the subject of plumage millinery we have a right to be just as Pharisaical as we choose.
Here in New York (and also in New Jersey) no man may sell, own for sale or offer for sale the plumage of any wild American bird other than a game bird. More than that, the plumage of no foreign bird be- longing to any bird family represented in the fauna of North America canbesoldhere! Thereareonlyafewkindsofimproper"millinery" feathers that it is possible to sell here under the law. Thanks to the long and arduous campaign of the National Association of Audubon Societies, founded and for ten years directed by gallant William Dutcher, you now see on the streets of New York very, very little wild-bird plum- age save tha't from game birds.
It is true that a few servant girls are now wearing the cast-off aigrettes of their mistresses; but they are only as one in a thousand. At Atlantic City there is said to be a fine display of servant-girl and ladies-maid aigrettes. In New York and New Jersey, in Pennsylvania for every- thing save the sale of heron and egret plumes (a privilege obtained by a bunko game), in Massachusetts, and in many other of our States, the wild-birds'-plumagemillinerybusinessisdead. Twoyearsago,whenthe New York legislature refused to repeal the Dutcher law, the Millinery Association asserted, and brought a cloud of witnesses to Albany to prove, that the enforcement of the law would throw thousands of oper- atives out of employment.
The law is in effect; and the aigrette business is dead in this state. Have any operatives starved, or been thrown out of employment? We
*In the preparation of this chapter and its illustrations, I have had much valuable assistance from Mr. C. Willjam Beebe, who recently has probed the London feather trade almost to the bottom.